Charlie Next Door

by Debashish Irengbam

  ‘So, you can get a boy toy for yourself, but I can’t even date an older man without raising your BP?’

  ‘Okay, first of all, he is not a boy toy. We are in a relationship.’

  ‘Since when? He came, like, yesterday.’

  ‘It’s been two months, actually,’ said Charlie, from somewhere in the background.

  ‘The point is – I am a grown woman. I know what I want. I know what I am doing,’ said Anupama, spouting her well-rehearsed lines.

  ‘Well, ditto!’

  ‘No, not ditto. You, young lady, were in an affair with a married man!’

  ‘MAMMA!’

  ‘If I may,’ Mehul cut in politely, ‘I think it would be better if we took this conversation elsewhere.’

  It was then that Anupama and Misha became aware of the pin-drop silence around them; all the canoodling couples in the vicinity had paused in their foreplay to watch the rather intriguing family drama unfolding before their eyes.

  ‘There is a rather nice coffee shop nearby. Perhaps, we could all sit down and have a calm discussion about this,’ he suggested in a voice that was placid, yet firm.

  Feeling like a toddler facing her school principal, Anupama just nodded, resentful at the ironic shift of authority. She glanced at Charlie, who had developed a sudden interest in the pebbles by his feet, his ears an interesting shade of crimson. A kitten marooned on a floundering raft couldn’t have looked more vulnerable.

  Moments after they stepped into the café, it began to rain, hard.

  The barrage of drops gave the sea a rippling appearance of unrest on the surface, underlining the calmness of the currents beneath. A diametrically opposite scenario pervaded the table of customers watching the silvery waves through the glass walls of the café, where the calm silence of the four occupants seated around the gate-legged table concealed the blizzard beneath the surface. Even in the tension and anger of the moment, Anupama found herself pinching herself in the arm for the fourth time, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. The surrealism of her situation hadn’t escaped her. She had pictured this moment of revelation to her children along more sensitive and tender lines. And yet, the fates had seated her facing her daughter and her elderly partner across a coffee table, with her own dirty little secret seated beside her, fidgeting with his napkin. It was just too absurd, too chaotic. In fact, it seemed that ever since she had met Charlie, her life had been pure chaos, a series of uncontrolled events that she could not have imagined even in her worst nightmares.

  ‘It’s so nice to finally meet you, Mrs Arora. Misha has said so many nice things about you,’ said Mehul, in a cautious attempt to break the ice. Neither of the ladies responded, their eyes fixed on the sea.

  ‘So, what do you do … sir?’ asked Charlie tentatively.

  ‘Please, call me Mehul. I am a professor of English literature at Misha’s college. That’s where we met.’ He smiled warmly at Misha and moved his hand towards her, when a stern sideways glance from Anupama made him rethink his move. Misha noticed this, and firmly reached for his hand, her eyes daring her mother to challenge her.

  ‘Cool,’ said Charlie.

  ‘And how did you two meet, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘On the terrace,’ said Charlie with a grin. ‘It’s quite a funny story—’ Anupama shot him a vitriolic glare. ‘Which I will narrate some other time.’

  ‘You know why this is happening, right?’ said Misha, smiling coldly at Anupama. ‘It’s karma.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All your life, you fenced us in with all your rules and regulations, ensuring that we always, always, toed the line. Well, where are your precious rules now?’

  ‘For your information, those were not my rules, they were your father’s. And the only reason I made you follow them was to keep the peace in the house.’

  ‘Please. Don’t even try to put this on Papa. He was totally chilled out.’

  ‘Because he had someone else doing the dirty work for him!’

  Misha scoffed, turning to Mehul. ‘This is so like her. She always has an excuse for everything.’

  ‘Hey, you talk to me directly.’

  ‘Madam, cappuccino?’ asked the waiter, arriving with their orders.

  ‘Here,’ said Misha.

  ‘Two café lattes. Regular.’

  Anupama and Mehul nodded. The waiter placed their cups in front of them and turned to Charlie. ‘Have you decided what you want, sir?’

  ‘Er, not yet,’ said Charlie, glancing at the menu.

  ‘Just take a cold coffee,’ said Anupama.

  ‘Yeah, Charlie, you had better take a cold coffee,’ sneered Misha.

  ‘Misha—’

  ‘I’ll take a cold coffee,’ Charlie said hurriedly to the waiter.

  ‘Mocha, caramel, vanilla?’

  ‘Er—’

  ‘Just get a plain cold coffee,’ said Anupama irritably.

  ‘With ice, without ice?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Ice-cream, non-ice cream?’

  ‘Leave,’ said Anupama in a tone so frosty that the waiter strategically retreated without another word.

  ‘And this is on a good day,’ Misha stage-whispered to Charlie.

  ‘Talk to me directly, or don’t talk at all.’

  ‘Sorry, but there’s one thing I don’t get,’ said Charlie. ‘If the rules were set by your husband, then why do you still need to follow them? I mean, why does it even matter anymore what the rules are?’

  And just like that, the spotlight was back on Anupama.

  ‘Because I have a responsibility.’

  ‘What responsibility?’ asked Misha.

  ‘You won’t understand.’

  ‘That’s convenient.’

  ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, Misha.’

  ‘Fine, then. What are we even sitting here for?’

  Grabbing her bag, Misha rose from the table, followed by Mehul. They had only gone a few steps, when Misha paused and turned on her heel to face her mother.

  ‘Oh, just so you know, I’m bringing Mehul to Nimit’s birthday party. You might be comfortable keeping your double-life a secret from the world, but I am not.’

  And with that, she marched off, leaving behind a stunned silence. The thought struck her that this was the first time that her daughter had rebelled against her so brazenly. Up until now, their squabbles – no matter how bitter – had been confined to within the walls of their home. Come to think of it, that was a rule too, wasn’t it? A rule she had set to maintain their decorum in society, as far as she and her family were concerned. Not that she was in a position to dictate the terms of social propriety anymore.

  A tumult of contradictory impulses rose within her, as she saw her daughter walking off hand in hand with that man. She wanted to run after them and call out to her daughter, while at the same time she wanted to run away and hide, to cry in solitude. On the one hand, she wanted to chastise Misha, while on the other, she wanted to understand the young girl’s turmoil. She wanted her daughter to uphold her mother’s rules, while she herself wanted to be accepted for defying them. She wished someone could just point her in the right direction, for neither her mind nor her body were in gear and she felt like she was coasting at breakneck speed. Would it be total anarchy at home now? Would mother and daughter ever be able to look at each other in the same way again?

  The waiter arrived with Charlie’s cold coffee, and she realized he had been sitting quietly next to her all this while, looking as uncertain as she felt.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  She shook her head, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths.

  ‘Do you have it?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That … that thing you smoke. What do you call it?’

  Charlie’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second. ‘Ganja?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want to smoke weed?’

  ‘Do you have it or no
t?’

  ‘No, but I know a place where we can get it. And I think I have some paper strips in my bag to roll up. But … are you sure?’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  21

  ‘Why are you with me at all? I mean, seriously, why?’

  ‘That’s the twenty-seventh time you have asked me that question.’

  ‘You’re counting?’

  ‘It was an approximate figure.’

  ‘It didn’t sound approximate.’

  ‘Yes, I’m counting. Sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I guess I just like to count.’

  ‘No, I mean why are you sorry? Why are you apologizing to me all the time?’

  Charlie opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. Anupama smiled. ‘You were going to say sorry again, weren’t you?’

  He smiled sheepishly.

  ‘I’m not a ticking time bomb, Charlie. You don’t have to defuse me all the time.’

  ‘I know. Sorry.’

  Anupama giggled. Charlie chuckled.

  Giggle, she thought to herself, taking another deep drag of the joint Charlie had expertly rolled. What a girly word. Giggle. Girls giggled. Men chuckled. But she wasn’t a girl, though, was she? She was a woman. And yet, she giggled. Fuck this world of giggles and chuckles. She would do as she pleased. If she wanted to chuckle, she would, and if she wanted to giggle, she would. Giggle.

  She took a deep, deep breath. Her head and body felt so much lighter. Gently, she ran her fingers through Charlie’s hair. He was lying beside her on the rough gravelly terrace, the intermittent moonlight breaking through the clouds and lighting his features with a soft, silvery glow. She loved the feel of his hair in her fingers. She loved the liberty of touching him wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted – the sheer power of it. She loved the clean, sweet breeze flowing over their bodies. And more than anything, she loved the idea of the two of them here. Here, of all places. It had been a risk, but boy, had it been worth it.

  For the terrace upon which they lay was not in their building – although that had been Charlie’s initial plan. It was her college.

  The place that had changed her life forever without intending to. The place where it had all started – her new life, story and identity. It was a place that had intimidated her as a youth, with its stern lecturers, strict dress rules, grim stone walls encompassing the entire perimeter and a library that was quieter than a cemetery at all times. The years may have faded its academic relevance and standing, turning it into one of those quaint little heritage institutes surviving on government subsidies that no one really cared for anymore, but there was still an ominous austerity about it that you could sense even from outside its now rusty, wrought-iron gates. In a lot of ways, to her the college represented socially what her mother stood for domestically – an inexorable authority. Omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. It was for this very reason that Anupama had chosen this location for her first tryst with marijuana. It just seemed befitting on so many levels.

  Anupama was well familiar with the one chink in this fortress, thanks to Renu – the lower left corner in the southwest segment of the boundary wall had collapsed a long time ago, leaving a gap just big enough for a person to crawl through. Although this had been haphazardly filled with loose bricks and stones, all it took was a slight shove and you were in. If one quietly replaced this makeshift repair after exiting, no one would even notice the transgression. She marvelled that this flaw in the superstructure of this magnificent edifice had survived all these years and wondered how many generations of students had taken advantage of it. As for getting to the terrace was concerned, the archaic security systems were no match for Charlie’s lock-breaking skills.

  So here she was, on this moonlit, monsoon night, with a boy, lying on her college terrace, doing something in her forties that she wouldn’t have dreamt of doing in her twenties. And people said miracles were pure fiction.

  ‘So, what happens now?’ asked Charlie, staring up at the sky.

  ‘I don’t know. And I honestly don’t care. At least, not right now. After all that’s happened today … after all the years spent worrying, fretting and caring … for these few moments, I just want to be me.’

  Charlie tilted her face towards his, his eyes trapping her attention.

  ‘I wish you could be you forever,’ he said softly. ‘’Coz when you are you, there’s no one like you.’

  Anupama smiled and traced his eyebrow with her forefinger, feeling the velvety softness. She didn’t know if it was the weed, but for some reason, he looked singularly beautiful tonight. She was afraid to pinch herself again. If this was a dream, she would rather stay asleep for a little longer. ‘Why are you with me?’ she asked in wonderment.

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ said Charlie, with an amused grin. ‘I could ask you the same question, you know.’

  ‘I think the answer would be a little too obvious.’

  ‘So, it’s all about the looks, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not. I mean, you are beautiful, it’s true … and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t matter … but, how do I put it, there is this thing about you … I feel I can trust you, or rather, that I can connect with you. And more than that, I feel like I know you. I mean, it’s absurd, of course. I don’t even know your full name yet or where you come from, but from what I have seen of you, it’s just … you and me – it just seems to fit, you know. Am I making any sense?’

  Charlie smiled, nodding. ‘More than you know.’

  ‘There is another slightly more selfish reason.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I am with you, I remember what it was like – back in the days when I would dream and fantasize about what it would be like to fall in love, to be in love. It’s like I’m living all those fantasies now. Flights of fancy that I had summarily dismissed and forgotten. That’s the thing about you, Charlie. You remind me of a forgotten me.’

  She took another drag and gazed up at the heavens, which seemed extraordinarily spectacular to her eyes that night. A distant star twinkled feebly every now and then from between the scudding clouds, to wink at them, like a mischievous little celestial spy. A sniffle reached her ears. She turned sideways to see Charlie hurriedly wiping his eyes.

  ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘What? No, of course not!’ he protested, rubbing his nose tightly. ‘Must be a cold or something.’

  Amused, Anupama passed him the joint and watched him take a long drag.

  ‘Chandrashekhar Dhillon,’ he said, releasing a grey cloud of smoke.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My real name. It’s Chandrashekhar Dhillon.’

  Anupama stared at him. ‘Chandrashekhar?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Dhillon.’

  ‘How did that become Charlie?’

  ‘My mom wanted to name me Charlie, my father wanted Chandrashekhar, and I was too young at the time to voice my opinion, so.’

  Anupama observed him closely. ‘You don’t look like a Chandrashekhar.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a Chandrashekhar, either. But you know how fathers can be, right? It was either his way or the highway. So, when I turned seventeen, I just said fuck it, I will be what I want to be.’

  ‘And so you became a hair stylist.’

  ‘No, I became a singer.’

  Anupama’s eyes shot wide open. ‘What?’

  He grinned. ‘I forget how little you know about me. I tried my hand at singing when I passed out of school, you know. Went into formal training and everything. I was pretty good too. At one point, I was even performing at local competitions and weddings and stuff.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Nothing really wow about that. The place where I come from, they aren’t very many options. But yeah, it felt nice to be appreciated.’

  ‘So why did you quit?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I just got bored. After a point, everything just became too repetitive. Everyone wanted to listen to the same songs, the same melodie
s. My heart wasn’t in it anymore.’

  ‘Sing something for me.’

  He burst into a throaty chuckle. ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘What? I want to hear you. Please.’

  His eyes turned to her eager face, before looking heavenward in exasperation. ‘Fine. I might be a bit rusty though. It’s been a while. What do you want me to sing?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  A thoughtful look crossed Charlie’s face. After a few seconds, he sat up cross-legged, his back straight, while Anupama propped herself up on her elbow, facing him. He closed his eyes, cleared his throat, and took a deep breath. What emanated from his mouth next was a slow, rather soulful-sounding Punjabi song. She didn’t understand some of the lyrics, but from the rather quivering tenor of its melody and the few words she could discern in between, it seemed to be a song of separation between two lovers and the angst that followed. Charlie’s brows were furrowed, his head swaying in sync with the scale of the tune. Anupama watched in silent awe, at the intense concentration reflected on his face and the power in his voice. It wasn’t just a song she was listening to, it was a story. This wasn’t mere talent, she realized, it was an art, and even in those few lines that he had sung, she could make out the passion he felt for it. This was a facet to him that she couldn’t even have guessed at before, and she wondered just how many more secrets lay beneath that seemingly uncomplicated front, waiting to be discovered.

  Anupama closed her eyes, absorbing the mood and the moment, letting his soothing voice take over her senses. She had never been much of a musical person and had a very poor memory of tunes and lyrics. But deep in her heart, she knew that she would remember this melody forever. This melody and this moment, when the man she loved sang for her.

  Charlie ended the song on a crescendo, his voice reaching a high pitch before fading into quietness. He opened his eyes and looked at her, the serenity on his face replaced by the impish grin she had come to recognize so well.

  ‘That was beautiful.’

  ‘Thanks, although I missed a few notes here and there—’

  Anupama kissed him, swiftly silencing all his doubts and self-criticism. When they parted, she had a look of amusement on her face.